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The online version of Illumination, a magazine published by the University of Missouri, won both best online magazine eduStyle awards (judged and People’s choice) this year.

As a judge for this category, I was really impressed by the quality of its design and the great use of multimedia.

That’s why I contacted Illumination’s designer, Joshua Hughes, multimedia specialist at the Office of Research, to find out how this little gem was put together. As you will see in this email interview, greatness comes with a price: time, work and talent.

Illumination Magazine, Research at the University of Missouri – Spring 2010

1) Illumination won the best online magazine eduStyle award this year, can you tell us how this version was developed?

I joined Mizzou’s Office of Research in August of last year, and it was clear that refreshing the Illumination site was one of the organization’s top goals.

I was quite impressed by our print book right from the get-go. The layout and photography was and is, top-notch. The website, unfortunately, felt like something else entirely. Like most sites, it just placed articles in a standard template. The visual impact you get from reading the magazine was almost completely lost in the translation to the web.

BEFORE

So bringing some of the print aesthetic to the website seemed like a fairly obvious strategy, and I spent the next few months working on a redesign. It was a lot of work, but we were able to launch the new version in early December.

AFTER

2) What platform do you use? How long does it take to put the magazine online? Tell us a bit more about your workflow?

The site itself is running very little specialized software. There isn’t a content management system. Aside from a bit of PHP scripting here and there, it’s all handcrafted HTML. This may change in the future, but for now it suits our needs perfectly.

It takes about 2-3 months to put the magazine up, but a lot of that is associated with multimedia production. Generating just the web portion takes about 3-4 weeks.

Most of the web design work is done after the print edition is complete. I use the finished assets to sketch potential layouts and create design comps. Sometimes it’s a real struggle to find ways to make the art direction work on the web, and other times the concepts seem to really come into their own.

3) How do the print and the online versions work together? Are they targeted to different audiences?

Because our print magazine publishes sometime difficult-to-approach stories about advanced research and scholarship, we have to work hard to draw general-interest readers into the book. We’ve found that the most effective way to generate interest is by experimenting with different visual approaches and design styles from issue to issue.

This approach presents unique challenges on the web, where usability and accessibility concerns have to be considered. Our web magazine thus employs a more structured visual scheme that ensures ready site access for a wide range of users. Within this structured framework, however, we do seek to design pages that allow our digital audience to experience the fresh look and feel of each new print book. This means not only repurposing and reconfiguring art and typography published in the print but, most importantly, designing pages that – especially when viewed in e-reader formats – might help our audience move beyond just a “website” and into “digital magazine” experience.

Strength in Diversity – Illumination, Spring 2010 – University of Missouri

We hope there will be significant overlap between the digital and print audience, and take pains to invite readers each version to seek out the other. Unfortunately, thus far we’ve not been able to collect much data on the extent to which this is happening.

4) What can you tell us about the way readers interact with both versions?

Other than the obvious stuff – print readers turn pages, online readers click through web pages and multimedia – we don’t have a good way to answer this question. We’d love to find the money to design and execute a formal reader survey, but so far we’ve not been able to make it happen. (We have been able to commission some lab-based usability studies in the past, but these were primarily geared toward straightforward, site-navigation issues.)

5) How do you measure success for both versions?

Again, due to our non-existent marketing budget, we haven’t been able to do formal reader/user surveys. Instead we rely on responses via a postage-paid reply card bound into each edition of the print book; comments made via a form on the website; data from web analytics; reprint and republication requests from media, faculty and professional groups; praise and complaints from our faculty, staff and students; and, of course, feedback from sites like eduStyle.

6) There is no way to comment about the articles on the online version. Can you explain the reasoning behind this design decision?

Adding this functionality is a subject that’s still under consideration. In general, our staff and management agree that an open dialogue on the topics we cover has the potential to serve both the mission of Illumination magazine and the University of Missouri as a whole. However, online comments don’t always result in a quality discussion. We need to make sure that if we implement this feature, it adds value to the site. That may not be a given.

UPDATE (August 31, 2010 at 12:22PM ET): Eric Olsen from Lewis University is the winner of the SIM Tech conference pass. Congratulations, Eric!

Fall is always a busy conference season (very similar to summer, actually). Once we’re done with the mandatory “break” from mid-August to mid-September to welcome students, things get usually very busy in October and November.

This year is no exception with Higher Ed Web in Cincinnati, OH (Oct 10-13), Educause in Anaheim, CA (Oct 12-15), SIM Tech in Las Vegas, NV (Oct 20-22), eduUI in Charlottesville, VA (Nov 7-9), the AMA Symposium in San Diego, CA (Nov 7-10) and a few CASE conferences.

So, why am I talking about SIM Tech in this post?

As I explained in my email newsletter last Tuesday, this year’s SIM Tech conference is a must-attend for anybody who is serious about using web analytics in higher education.

Avinash Kaushik, the guy who actually wrote THE book (actually 2) on how to use web analytics and coined several of my favorite phrases about analytics (I love his definition of bounce rate: I came, I puke, I left) will be giving the keynote. As soon as you’ve learned a bit about Analytics, you understand that this great expert has made a tremendous contribution to this field. He is the real deal. Believe me.

I’ll have to follow in his footsteps – I’ll be speaking about a topic dear to my heart: the higher ed analytics revolution I’m trying to nurture (well, fuel might be a better term for a revolution) – and I cannot tell you how stressed and excited at the same time I feel. Imagine talking about a project to walk on Mars after a keynote on the topic by Neil Amstrong. Fortunately, Shelby Thayer from Penn State University – who has been working on the revolution as my lead expert and presented several webinars about the nitty gritty of Analytics for Higher Ed Experts – will offer some support and expert insights. The goal of my session is to give you the talking points, tools and resources necessary to get you started and rolling with Analytics in a higher education context.

Jessica Krywosa from Suffolk University and Rick Allen from Babson College will co-present a session on how to get from your “business” (or institutional if you prefer) goals to the success metrics you’ll need to track. They will talk about strategy and how analytics can give the answers to the questions that matter for your institution.

Joshua Dodson from Lincoln Memorial University will show and tell all the nitty gritty advanced options to use Google Analytics to its fullest and automate some of the work.

If you attend SIM Tech this October, you’ll leave Vegas with all you need to not only get started with analytics in higher education but to go really far.

And you know, what’s even better about this conference?

You’ll also get to hear about other big topics in higher ed web communications and marketing (content strategy, facebook, Foursquare and Cie, etc.) in just 3 days.

I hate to say that (because it’s organized by a vendor – and if you’ve been reading this blog for some time you know how I love to stay away from higher ed vendors especially on this blog – blame my previous-life journalistic background) but this is the kind of conferences I would have like to put together. The speakers are hand-picked for their expertise or their insights – and that’s exactly what I try to do when I design a webinar series for Higher Ed Experts. It’s probably not a coincidence that several of Higher Ed Experts current and past speakers will be at SIM Tech: Tim Nekritz, Dave Olsen, Michael Fienen, Karlyn Morrissette, Nick deNardis and Shelby Thayer.

Have a look at the speaker line up and the program, you be the judge.

If you decide to go, try to register before tomorrow (August 31st – it’s the end of the early bird).

And, if you can fly to Las Vegas and book your hotel, post a comment below to enter today’s conference pass give away. I got a single pass to offer to the readers of this blog (that is if you made it thus far, I guess ;-).
No need to tell me anything special to get a chance to win, just post a comment. I’ll do a simple drawing and post the winner name tomorrow at 12PM ET at the top of the post.

Disclaimer: You should know I’ve tagged the links to the conference website mainly to walk… my talk – hey, I’ll be speaking about analytics – and not because this post is a piece of hidden advertising (I’d also like to find out if what I tell you push you to act in any way). While I was asked if I could mention the conference in a blog post, I chose to do so because it looks like this conference – especially with this year’s focus on Analytics – deserves it. If it doesn’t, I’ll make sure to blog about it to let you know ;-)

Offering a consistent look and feel on the Web at a big university is a challenge. When implementing a content management system across hundreds of units or departments isn’t an option – for budget reason, some institutions have to adopt a different approach.

At the University of Alabama, the central web communications team includes only 4 people. That’s why Andy Rainey, director of Web Communications, is a big proponent of the “teach-them-how-to-fish” approach. His team has always designed and published web resources to help the larger university community get up to speed with their web presence, using more recently WordPress as their web platform of choice.

Last April they launched 3 branded WordPress themes to create the winning combo of ease of use with WordPress and consistency with a unique web template. With the release earlier this summer of WP 3.0, UA Web Communication Team was able to merge the 3 themes into a single one including some very powerful customization options to accommodate the special needs of different units on campus.

Here’s a regular second-level page, the Admissions web page on the main website:

And, here are a few screenshots of the WP 3.0 template:

I asked Andy Rainey, director of Web Communications at the University of Alabama, to answer a few questions about this project.

1) Did you develop the WP theme in-house? Who did it?

The theme was developed in-house by our Web Communications team, led by developer Matthew Muro. Matthew previously built and released our first UA-branded WordPress themes earlier this spring, but as the new WP 3.0 version emerged, he took the opportunity to significantly improve the functionality and flexibility of the themes. The 3.0 theme utilizes a custom admin panel that provides control of major design aspects of a site without requiring customization of the code itself. He was also able to create a single, united theme based on our UA Web Templates that provided a number of different layout and configuration options, instead of requiring users to choose which theme they wanted up front. In this way, we hope the theme becomes more fluid and flexible to current and future needs.

2) How did your campus community react to the launch of the WP themes?

The feedback we have received has been very positive. In fact, the provision of this theme is in large part the result of listening to much discussion among campus webmasters and functional users. The need for a “plug-and-play” solution for campus web sites has been the most significant need we’ve heard in the past few years, and while any solution requires some degree of effort and customization to be successful, we feel the theme is a great resource for units lacking full-time web expertise or resources to obtain that expertise to be able to easily build an accessible, usable, effective and institutionally-branded web site. The theme is provided as a true open-source resource, with no stipulations other than it must be used for an official or unofficial University of Alabama web site only, and that its usage must not violate general UA web policies. Significant time and energy has gone into creating tutorials and resources on our Web Guide site that make customizing the theme to meet specific needs a simpler process.

3) Do you provide hosting for their WP install? Do you offer to run their website from your own WP 3.0 install?

Hosting for WordPress web sites is available through the campus’s office of information technology, and they’re working to further streamline the process to improve how these sites are deployed and managed. As WP 3.0′s code base is now merged with WordPress MU, it should become easier and more efficient to roll out new WordPress web sites in a more scalable and repeatable manner going forward.

4) Any good examples of implemented WP UA websites to share?

This theme was just released a few weeks ago, so really it’s just getting started. But we have seen great results with using WordPress for institutional web sites, which informed our decision to offer WordPress themes. Our news center suite (UA news , Dialog – our faculty and staff newsletter and and our magazine Research) are custom WordPress sites, and by using WordPress we’ve been able to empower content providers to manage these sites almost exclusively. And we previously tested the first version of our UA WordPress themes with our own Editorial Style Manual as a proof-of-concept.
There are many campus web sites already using WordPress, so this new theme provides additional options for those sites to utilize institutional resources and offers others the ability to have that institutional brand. We’re treating this theme as one of our primary offerings to campus at large and we will continue to invest our time and resources to improving the themes and the resources available to those who wish to use them, with the goal of significantly improving the performance, consistency and effectiveness of our overall campus web presence through the most efficient means possible.

This is just a quick post about a newly redesigned website: Macalester College’s.

Nick Balcom Raleigh, Online Communications Coordinator at Macalester, emailed me a couple of weeks ago about the redesign – so it’s about time I share it with you :-)

The new version was developed in-house by a team of four and has replaced a previous design from 2004.

Nick explained that the new design is built using the open-source CSS framework Blueprint, jQuery and jQuery UI plugin to enhance interactive elements and is compliant with W3C and ADA.

I really like how the live Facebook feed is integrated in the footer.

The contrast between the main area and the footer/background with bright colors in the former and sepia tones in the second makes this design even more powerful. If you want to read more about its different features, you can have a look at this post written by the team.

What do you think?

I know I’ve been talking about this higher ed online analytics revolution for some time now, but it’s now time for action.

It started in May with a survey to get a better idea of the state of online analytics in higher education. The survey was a big success as 399 professionals working in higher education took the time to fill it out. The results have been published and shared widely. They basically confirm that we’ve got some serious work in front of us to give online analytics the place it deserves in the higher ed marketing decision process.

Higher Ed Analytics | The Official Website of The Higher Ed Online Analytics Revolution

I’ve decided to help you start this revolution at your institution and help it spread across the industry in several ways:

• by seeding conversations about analytics at conferences, on twitter, in blogs, etc.
• by sharing a basic framework for your measurement strategy in the presentations I gave (EduComm and eduWeb) and will be giving (HighEdWeb and SIM Tech) at higher ed conferences in 2010
• by creating a one-stop website including resources, links and presentations about the topic: www.higheredanalytics.com
• by launching a monthly benchmarking survey (yeah, that’s the 12-metrics-for-a-revolution thingy I’ve been talking about this summer)

In higher education benchmarking data is key to institutional change. I’m not sure this is the most efficient change agent by nature, but higher ed executives understand and love benchmarking data. This is why the monthly benchmarking report will help you “sell” online analytics to your stakeholders and make this revolution happen in higher education.

So, if you want to find out how well your website is doing compared to your peers’, just share your July 2010 data for 12 basic metrics by taking our monthly benchmarking survey before August 20, 2010.

The collected data will be compiled and shared as aggregates only (so, no need to worry about your results being associated to any piece of information that could help identify your institution).
We will share the full report only with folks who take the survey. In other words, if you want us to show you the data, you gotta show yours first ;-)

Our goal is to get data from at least 100 institutions for this round. If you only have access to data for your office/department or your unit (college, school, institute, etc.), you can still take the survey, just make sure you select the right option when asked.

As soon as we go above 200, we will be able to provide some segmented reports (public/private, 4-year, 2-year, business schools, college of, etc.), so invite your colleagues working at other institutions to join as well at www.higheredanalytics.com .

I’ve created a basic spreadsheet (.xls file) so you can keep track of your results and fill out the survey quickly.

If you haven’t receive an email invitation yet to take the July 2010 Benchmarking Survey, you can just register online to receive your invitation right away.

Questions? Just email karine@collegewebeditor.com

Have you heard about the news yet?

The Higher Ed Analytics Revolution has officially started! In the session I presented today at the eduWeb conference, I’ve finally got a chance to explain my plans for this revolution.

I want to help you change the way marketing decisions are made at your institution – most of the time they are based on hunches, guesses or opinions while it’s now possible to adopt a more data-driven approach with the help of Online Analytics.

Earlier today I shared my 7-step plan to develop a web analytics process. Technology wasn’t very cooperative this afternoon in Chicago as the AV guy had some trouble connecting my laptop to the projector and then forgot to plug back in my laptop with a dying battery, but I think I managed to get my message across.

I’ve uploaded my slide deck to Slideshare, so you can have a look at it.

In this presentation, I explain that we are going to start to collect data about 12 basic metrics along with some info about the size and type of your institution every month.

Our goal is to create and share some useful benchmarking data to help you inform your marketing decisions and develop a data-driven culture in your web, marketing or communication office.

If you’re interested and want to join the revolution, just register to receive updates and invitations to fill out the monthly benchmarking survey at www.higheredanalytics.com.

We will start on August 11, 2010 and you will have to submit your data to receive the monthly benchmarking report.

We want to start now and fine tune the segmentation options as we go, so your feedback, comments and suggestions are more than welcome at that stage.

We know it’s not going to be the perfect at the beginning but revolution aren’t done overnight, so let’s start now and aim for good enough, shall we?

I’ve just arrived at the DoubleTree Hotel in Chicago for eduWeb.

My last eduWeb was in 2008: I met great folks, gave the closing keynote and… it took me 2 days to make it back home from Atlantic City due to flight delays in Philly :-)

The conference starts this Monday (tomorrow) with a few workshops in the morning followed by the keynote, Brand ArchiTECHture: Building Your Brand on the Web & Managing to Make it Thrive, presented by Terry Flannery from American University.

My session is scheduled just after the keynote (well after a short break so they can prepare the rooms) at 3:30PM CT. It’s about web analytics and measurement strategy.

Measure Twice, Cut Once: 7-Step Plan to Your Measurement Strategy for Online Marketing
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, email marketing, web advertising, mobile web and more: so many marketing and communication channels, so little time and money. With tight budgets and an ever increasing portfolio of new electronic tools, measurement isn’t optional anymore, but goes far beyond the creation of a Google Analytics account. Find out how to create and implement a measurement strategy that will inform your decisions and focus your efforts on what works in higher education and for your institution.

This session will also mark the official kick off of the higher ed analytics revolution I’ve been talking about – so if you’re at the conference, come start something big with us! I’ll share more details along with the results of our previous survey and my slide deck with everybody else after the presentation on this blog.

I’m also at the conference to learn more about what YOU are doing through the presentations but also the conversations – so, please come say “hi” if you see me at the hotel or in the neighborhood.

If you want to pitch an idea for a future webinar at Higher Ed Experts, don’t be shy. Come tell me about it. I’m always looking to recruit new speakers.

I’m not sure I’ll be able to do any serious live blogging (yeah, we used to do that before Twitter – and I kind of like it) because my laptop battery has just died on me, but I’ll try to recap the best of the sessions I attend with the help of a fantastic hand held device: a notebook :-).

Southeast Missouri State University launched its mobile website in January this year. When I heard the news I was very pleased because a team from SEMO had attended the Going Mobile Webinar Series in October 2009.

A few months ago Thomas Marrone, Web Design & Support Manager at SEMO Marketing & University Relations emailed me to share the news (and say thanks). At that time, I asked him a few questions about the whole project. Things have been so busy for those past few months that this email interview got stuck in my “draft post” pile.

With the next Going Mobile Webinar Series scheduled on August 4, it makes sense to publish this interview now as it might give you an idea of how the higher ed Mobile Web Open Source Platform developed and maintained by our presenter, Dave Olsen, can help you (whether you attend the webinar or not).

Southeast Mobile Web Site, Southeast Missouri State University

1) How long did it take to develop the mobile version of your website? How big was the team working on this project?

The project was completed on Jan. 19 and we launched it on the 21st. We had been working on it off and on since October 2009, so about three months.

Brian Holdman, Technology Specialist for University Advancement, took the lead on this project and figured out the nuts and bolts. I handled the interface design. We had networking support from Tom Westbrook and Tre Wallhausen and application support from Dan Koeppel, all in Information Technology. One of our student workers, Daniel Johnson, also provided usability input and a lot of work on the database that drives the campus map.

So the site was done with the involvement of 5 full time staff and one student worker, though we all chipped in with bits and pieces and developed the mobile site on the top of our other responsibilities.

2) How did the webinar series “Going Mobile” help you with the development of this website?

The Webinar was crucial in introducing us to the MIT Mobile framework and the work that Dave Olsen did adapting the Framework for use at other campuses. We also got in touch with Dave directly and he was very gracious in answering our questions once we really dug into the project.

3) What did you learn during the process that might help your colleagues at other institutions?

Don’t be afraid to mess around and see how far you can take a side project. We started messing around with the Mobile Framework to see what was possible, and as we began working with it, it became clear that we really could build a product for the campus using the resources we had.

Because the MIT people and Dave were willing to share their work with the Higher Ed community we could take that and create a mobile site with extremely limited resources. The only thing we “paid” for the mobile site was the HigherEdExperts Webinar fee; everything else was institutional labor cost the University was going to be paying anyway. When you compare that to some Universities that have paid $40,000 for a vendor to build them an iPhone application I think we made out pretty well. So, the lesson from all that is to keep an eye on what’s out there and always take up on someone’s offer to share what they’re doing with you.

I started to write about the mobile web in higher education about a year ago (The ABC of Mobile Marketing for my University Business column), but I know I’ll be writing more and more about it in the coming months (and not because of the August 4 “Going Mobile” webinar series by Higher Ed Experts).

You might have noticed yourself that several sessions and workshops about the topic have been popping up this year at higher ed conferences. So, it sounds like we have finally passed the very-early-adopter phase with more and more institutions starting to cater to their mobile web users.

If you still need to sell the mobile web to your boss, I’ve gathered some fresh data from two different surveys to help you build your case.

I’ve already shared some of the data included in the E-Expectations Report published last week, but I’d like to bring to your attention a single data point from this survey:

The Pew Internet and American Life Project released a report about Mobile Access two weeks ago (July 7, 2010) with really up-to-date results as the survey was done by phone (landlines and cell phones) between April 29 and May 30, 2010.

You can download the 25-page PDF report for free, but here are the most useful data points for marketers and web professionals in higher education.

• 9 in 10 young adults aged 18-29 own a cell phone (compared to 82% for all adults)
• 19% use a cell phone only to go mobile, 84% use a laptop AND a cell phone
• 55% of all cell phone owners go online at least every day
• 52% of 18-29 year olds and 52% of college grads of any age go online with their phone several times a day
• 65% of 18-29 year old cell phone owners access the internet with their phone
• 19% of 18-29 year old cell phone owners have made a charitable donation by text (compared to 10% for 30-49 year old users) – Could it be the solution to get young alums in the habit of giving to their alma mater?
• Young adults are more likely than older users to engage in mobile data applications as shown in the chart from the Pew Internet and American Life Project below.

As you can see, the mobile web channel is definitely getting a fair share of attention and action from students and young alums.

While several institutions have chosen to outsource the development of their mobile websites, you don’t have to go this route thank to the higher ed open source platform based on MIT Mobile and further developed by Dave Olsen from West Virginia University.

If you want to get started more smoothly, you should definitely register for Going Mobile: How to develop the mobile website of your institution with Mobile OSP.

In my previous post, Chris Garcia from BYU Library Multimedia Team answered a few questions about the YouTube hit his team created, but if you want to see how they did this million-view video (1,357,775 at the time of this writing including 126,150 on mobile devices), just watch this short making of:

You can also learn more about the team on the blog they created:

New Spice